To Remember or Not to Remember - Are Memories Essential to the Healing Process?

[WorkingThruIt]

So there was a portion of my traumatic event that is missing. I have some recollection of what I was thinking before and after the blank spot, but recall a strange feeling of not being connected to the outside of my body (no sensory input at all). I know it sounds strange, but that is the best I can explain it.

I am at a place in the therapy that I may want to consider trying to fill in blank spot, but the thought of that worries me. I feel like the blank spot has no consequence, no importance. On the other hand, part of me is concerned that it may be something more horrible than the rest of the experience. If it is worse, I am not sure that I want to remember it. I have tried in the past to recall it on my own, but that has never been successful.

Is remembering essential to the whole healing process?

 

[Deleted member 541]

There are time frames of my childhood that I don't remember. I'm sure there was abuse during that time. I used to want to remember, now I don't. I just deal with the issues and trauma that I do remember.

I think it's an individual thing if you want to remember or not.

 

[Grama-Herc]

I can completely understand the need to remember. This has been an issue for me for many, many years. I, like you, am terrified about what IS back there in the back of my memory.

I am finally coming to terms with the missing pieces and have stopped obsessing over them. I actually think that dealing with the aftermath of our traumas is more important.

I found that my imagination was messing with my head way to much. Perhaps knowing what happened is more dangerous than the actual event.

After years with my T he felt that healing was more important. He also said that I would remember when I was healthy enough and my self could handle the information. He also said I may never remember, so why cause more grief worrying.

Hope this help you

 

[anthony]

There are different aspects to recollection.... in that more than you think, this is totally up to you. For the most part you control your brain, how it functions and whether you truly want to recollect an event or not. Yes, sometimes you brain does bury it or jumble it which makes it hard for you to piece back together, however; it can always be pieced together if you want it to be with various forms of technique, ie. mental imagery, EMDR, hypnotherapy.... its just a matter of finding the right expert who can do it for you. There are other means also with exposure, ie. writing, where you write your trauma out, you read it over and over, you then add the little pieces you missed by rewriting it, you read it over and over again, you add the little pieces you missed again by rewriting it and so forth. By the end hopefully you then have a complete recollection of an event without any detail missed for you to read. That is the most basic which most therapists use.

Either way, you must not beat yourself up over this. You must not punish yourself for your memory. You either choose to really give it a good go at having that memory recalled or you accept that it will either return in its own time at which point you will engage those memories, or you accept that it may just never return and continue living your life with what you know only, and not that what you do not know.

 

[Acer]

I recently read that ptsd affects memory in that trauma actually reduces the areas (in size) where short term memories are stored. I read that some of these memories are irretrievable because of that simple fact.

 

[Claire]

I cant remember my car crash totally. I remember before and after but not the point of impact. I think I'm missing about 10-20 seconds. The problem I have now is knowing what's real and what's not. I have had dreams of what might have happened but as I dont remember I really dont know if any of them were real or not.

I dont think it matters but I do find it a bit frustrating just not knowing if what I 'remember' now is an actual memory or just made up to fill in the gap.

 

[Frankie]

Anthony, you are so right in what you are saying. My bf is seeing a great therapist for the past 3 years (well, great for him anyways) cause I do believe that each individual is different, hence, the need to look for the "right" therapist !

My bf has been writing and reading what he wrote, over and over, about his experiences, fears, emotions, hurts...etc...and like you say it is like a "puzzle", sentences, words, phrases, here and there...till the whole picture comes ! Always taking the time it takes !

Well, a couple of times he has told me that by reading what he wrote, new things have come up....and he then felt that what he wrote made sense ! It is his journey in healing :)

 

[ruddy]

I have a horribly vivid memory of most of my trauma but there is a missing time frame. I'm not sure if I blocked it out or just plain passed out from being choked and having my head bashed into a concrete wall a few times. I'm not sure I want to recall the missing time frame or think it's significant to my healing process, but I'm wondering if it's even possible to recall events that happened while "passed out" or if those memories would be accurate.

 

[waif123]

I just wanted to share with you, that this Monday during a therapy session, the piece of one of my traumas, came to me in a very intense flashback. I to had blocked out the actual traumatic event, I remembered right up to it, and right after it. It was very intense, but I now have the feeling that knowing everything,I can now work on lessening the impact of this particular trauma. But I know my therapist has said if someone is leading a good life, he would never have them recall the sever trauma's unless essential to the therapy they were doing, because it can be very overwhelming.

it really is a decision for each person, but I am glad I finally know what exactly happened

 

[anthony]

I recently read that ptsd affects memory in that trauma actually reduces the areas (in size) where short term memories are stored. I read that some of these memories are irretrievable because of that simple fact.

Whilst what you say has some fact, short term memory is not about the trauma memory. If your brain suffered significant damage due to the trauma, yes, this would suit. Though if your trauma is not of something that also had significant head injury, then not exactly correct. The decrease in cortex is more to do with the ability to retrieve the memory, not that it doesn't exist, just how to retrieve it. Then with brain injury often the parts of memory get stored uniquely, they become mixed.

Yes, trauma itself takes our perfectly good memories and mixes them on us, which is how we suddenly begin adding things to our trauma that never occurred, we cannot find significant other parts of trauma that did occur, etc. Its not that the memory is not their, it is, its just no longer easily accessible. This is why certain techniques exist to help people put the pieces back together again, to help the brain release the memory parts to combine as one solid and truthful memory again.

Saying this though, for some people they simply do not want to remember, so they won't. Some say they want too, but actually sub-consciously do not want to remember because they are not ready to deal with the pain associated to the trauma. Some, will never remember for reasons outside of their control, being amnesia type aspects within their brain itself.

For the majority of trauma sufferers though, trauma can be released, it can be remembered, and it can be pieced back together IF the person really wants it to be. Very very rare that it can't be put back together and recollected if the person truly wants to recall the memories and deal with the pain at the conscious level, instead of it affecting them at the sub-conscious level constantly.

 

[Marlene]

Like a lot who've responded here I have memories up to and after my initial trauma. What actually happened, I don't know. I can speculate by trying to recreate, in my mind, what happened and use logic to fill in blanks. It helps...to a point. I also know there are a number of different opinions on whether recoverying memories are important for recovery.

Here's my opinion. It's important to me that I remember. But that's me. I'm the kind of person who searches out answers that I don't have. I don't know if I will ever recover these 'lost' memories. I'd like to just for my own personal feeling of completness. But it hasn't stopped me from working on myself, my traumas and my healing. I have gotten back bits and pieces that I never had before. So it's something. Research I've read says that dissociating during trauma (which I did) tends to make memory recovery a crap shoot at best.

So I keep moving forward and deal with what comes to me. And I hope as I deal with things that more and more memories will come to the surface for me. If not, I've mostly come to terms with that.

Lisa

 

[Nicolette]

It's funny what you say Lisa as I can remember some of the bad things which happened to me (but I don't have PTSD of course) but I can barely remember any other normal or good things from around the times I experienced trauma.

I also have a memory of a situation where I was raped where I saw the room and the darkness but knew what happened.....I know this is labelled disassociation but the weird part was it was more like I had a sixth sense and knew what was going on while looking into darkness.

As I did try to deal with my traumas and got older, when other situations arose, I always felt somewhere between being there and watching...like being stuck as to whether acknowledge it or disassociate.

Fundamentally for me, in order to heal something you need to find what is broken first - whether that be a memory or acknowledging what you know to be true. As in there is a police report that you were raped and medical evidence to substantiate it but you can't remember it happening to you. I think you have to come to some acceptance of the reality before you can begin to heal. Perhaps when you do decide to accept something you know the memories may eventually come back....or they may never come back. Either way you have to decide to either accept something happened to you and try and heal it or you can decide to put it off waiting for a memory to appear. I think this is similar to what Lisa is saying she is doing.